- Letter from the Director
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<>LETTER
FROM THE DIRECTOR

So lets start off
this week with a couple of pieces of simple happy news.

Lamont Alum (of more than 20 years) and current president
of our
Alumni Association, Steve Cande, has been awarded the 2007
Robert L.
and Betty P. Cody Award in Ocean Sciences (gold medal and
$10,000).
Many congratulations Steve!

And this week, in fact to be precise - 1am on Thursday morning
- saw
the arrival of the latest new prospective Lamont Alum - Milo
Nooner -
congratulations to proud parents Scott and Kate.

The draft program for this year's Open House (October 6th)
is up on
our web site, and flyers and postcards are available - so
get the
word out to friends and family and schools.

The week began with an Advisory Board meeting on Monday -
another
successful meeting the highlights being a demo of the prototype
of
Wade McGillis' real time web based atmospheric CO2 monitoring
system,
and a very interesting discussion of the possible establishment
of a
pilot program, supported directly by Board members to provide
seed
funding for new research ideas. This will need to be developed
over
the next meeting or two, but it is an exciting idea that received
strong support from several Board members.

Suzanne Carbotte and Bill Ryan hosted the GEBCO sub committee
on
digital bathymetry here on Tuesday - it was good to see many
old
friends (e.g. the last time I saw John Hall was on board the
steam
powered research vessel Atlantis II in Lisbon Portugal in
1972!)
and hear about the continuing struggle to produce the best
possible
images of ocean floor topography.

And I gave my second welcoming speech of the week to a diverse
group
hosted by Wade McGillis on Friday who were here to talk about
the
design and implementation of the Hudson River Integrated Observing
System (HRIOS) [Clues on how to pronounce this acronym without
spitting too much would be appreciated]. This involved
representatives from a host of local, state and federal agencies
-
including Hudson River Foundation, New York State DEC, NOAA's
National Weather Service, USGS, Institute for Ecological Studies,
NY/
NJ COAST, Cornell Water Resource Institute. They ended their
meeting
with a field trip to the newly established LDEO monitoring
station on
Piermont Pier, that as of last night, is feeding an impressively
large suite of data in real time on both atmospheric and river
water
characteristics. Hopefully before Open House this will all
be
available on the web with a user friendly front end for everyone
to
see and understand.

And so the first full week of the new academic year comes
to an end,
Have a good weekend,

- Mike

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